Indian Summer

Everything, Mary Oliver

The Breathing, Denise Levertov

A Prayer by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

Like a Small Café, That’s Love by Mahmoud Darwish (translated by Mohammad Shaheen)

Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara

Eating Together by Li-Young Lee

The Orange by Wendy Cope

The Quiet Machine, Ada Limón

To Go Mad, Paruyr Sevak

Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern, Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

Your Unripe Love, Paruyr Sevak (from “Anthology of Armenian poetry")

Here and Now by Peter Balakian

Ich finde dich (I find you) by Rainer Maria Rilke

The Thing Is by Ellen Bass

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

I Want to Write Something So Simply by Mary Oliver

What's Not to Love by Brendan Constantine

Where does such tenderness come from? by Marina Tsvetaeva

You Are Tired (I Think) by E. E. Cummings

Living With the News by W.S.Merwin

ᵉˣᶜᵉʳᵖᵗˢ ᶠʳᵒᵐ ᵃⁿ ᵘⁿʷʳⁱᵗᵗᵉⁿ ᵇᵒᵒᵏ 𐙚

i fit myself into someone else’s skin.

although it never feels quite right.

anything to cover me.

anyone who has promise.

anyone but me.

i need to shield myself from this world.

nor the past or the future,

any “me”

has or will ever know peace.

i must become another.

i must.

i have to.

a fresh start.

a new identity.

I’ve loved those

who opened their arms

as long as I knew not to spill.

The quiet ones

who slept in my silence

like it was theirs to rest in,

never noticing

how much I bled

to keep the room still.

The loud ones

who needed to feel like gods,

so I made altars of my softness

and called it worship

because I didn’t know

the name of what I was losing.

I’ve loved

the flicker of something vast

not because it stayed,

but because it showed me

what it was to be lit

without setting myself on fire.

I’ve folded myself into smaller rooms

just to be let inside.

Trimmed my edges

to slip through doors

that were never meant to hold me.

I bent

spine and voice,

breath and wanting

until I disappeared into something palatable.

And they said I was easy to love.

I waited

to be seen

by eyes that only wanted warmth,

never wonder.

And I called that love.

Control wore kindness like perfume.

Safety was a room with no air.

And fire

fire always vanished

before I could ask if it would stay

when the flames died down.

They mistook me

for a turning point.

A fever dream.

The strange girl in the story

right before the hero finds his name.

No one asked

what it cost

to be the haunting they remembered

but never chose.

I’ve been

the bed they collapsed into.

The hush before their decisions.

The echo beneath their healing.

I loved in pieces

because that’s all they reached for.

But maybe there’s more to me

than what they could carry.

More than the parts

they found beautiful

when I was quiet enough

to forget myself.

Maybe I’m still remembering

what I was

before I learned to fold.

Or maybe I was always

just on the edge

never fully here,

never fully gone.

And maybe, just maybe